The Westport Library was packed last night with entrepreneurs (current and future), tech types, and friends and fans of our town’s best and brightest recent Staples High School graduates.
Startup Westport’s “Young Innovators” forum featured 4 alums — none over 25 years old — and an only slightly older venture capitalist.
Dylan Diamond (CEO of Saturn Technologies), Max Hammer and Josh Karol (CEO and CTO, respectively, of CrowdVolt), and Whop CTO Jack Sharkey chatted with Molly O’Shea about the challenges, perils and joys of starting — then running — a multimillion-dollar business while still in college.
Or making the decision to drop out, to do so.
Panelists (from left) Max Hammer, Jack Sharkey, Josh Karol and Dylan Diamond, with moderator Molly O’Shea. (Photo/Kara Curtis)
The money they’ve raised is mind-boggling. So is the creativity they’ve shown, the detours they’ve taken, and the humility with which they talk about their work (which, in all 5 cases, is also their passion).
All gave enormous credit to Staples’ computer science program, which offered the tools to code, create and collaborate.
Diamond noted that then-principal John Dodig and instructor Dave Scrofani provided important backing, when certain administrators wanted to shut down his iStaples app.
(It gave students easy access to schedules, classmates and grades. Now, as Saturn, it’s used by students in 22,000 schools nationwide. Coming soon: colleges.)
Their career paths have already taken them to big companies like Tesla. But the panelists prefer entrepreneurship.
“Shoot for the moon,” Sharkey said. “If you miss, you can always get a job.”
“The opportunity cost in high school and college is so low,” said former University of Pennsylvania student Diamond, adding that young people have great insight into “how to build things.”
1st Selectwoman Jen Tooker (far left) read a proclamation honoring Staples’ computer science program. From left: former principal John Dodig, instructors Dave Scrofani and Joanne Klouda, department chair John DeLuca. (Photo/Dan Woog)
The 4 learned the financial side of entrepreneurship along the way (including the importance of giving equity to new hires, at the start).
The young entrepreneurs all echoed Diamond’s advice: “Hire people smarter than you. Don’t pretend you know everything. It’s okay to say ‘I don’t know.'”
“Don’t get too attached to resumes,” Kozol added.
It has not always been easy. During COVID, when schools were closed, Diamond’s user base quickly dropped to “zero.”
But he and his classmates quickly learned the importance of pivoting.
Now Diamond is on his way to making Saturn “the world’s most fun personal calendar.” Google and Microsoft will never know what hit them.
(“06880” often highlights the success of Staples graduates, of all ages and types. If you enjoy this coverage on your hyper-local blog, please click here to support our work. Thank you!)
Yeah Staples High School ‼️🇺🇸
So good to hear the name Dave Scrofani again. Even right out school when he taught me physics in the mid-late 90s, he was the kind of teacher that I believe made Staples a special place to go to school and the kind of place that was able to encourage these kind of special founders to flourish.
Great program last night, all 4 of these young people are inspiring as are their mentors along the way!
Fantastic to see the incredible accomplishments of the Staples HS Computer program since my days in the late 1960s…
Back in the day, the closest that Staples had to a computer was a room full of punch-card sorting equipment, which could be programmed to print out schedules, report cards, etc. Students were scarcely allowed to touch it! In 1967-68, we got a Teletype-33 terminal, which, on a good day, could connect via a handset modem to a time-sharing computer (I think it was in Bridgeport) at a rate of 10 characters per second. With patience, you could enter a BASIC or FORTRAN program, and access a few KBytes of memory.
In the 68-69 school year, the math department purchased a programmable HP desktop calculator (about the size of an IBM Selectric typewrite), which we could program to perform many interesting tasks and solve math problems. Within a few years, HP had managed to package this much computing power in the first pocket calculators. B60-70, we added a flatbed plotter (good for plotting everything from fractals to planetary orbits).
PCs did not really arrive until the mid-1980s. No looking back!
Scott Brodie, Staples ’70.
Wonderful to see such a positive example set and support for all ages. Thanks for covering these types of positive events, that make the town special and highlight how talented folks are helping on many fronts.